A retired justice of
this district’s Court of Appeal has taken a stance in a local political race,
accusing a candidate for supervisor in his adopted county of violating campaign
finance rules.

William Masterson, who
left Div. One in 2000 and moved to Mendocino the following year, filed the
complaint Aug. 26 against former Rep. Dan Hamburg, who is running to represent
District 5, in southwestern MendicinoCounty, on the board. The
board staff notified Masterson Sept. 9 that it is investigating and will notify
him when a disposition is reached.

Masterson told the
MetNews Friday that he became involved at the behest of Hamburg’s opponent, Wendy
Roberts. Roberts finished second to Hamburg in the June primary, in which two other
candidates were eliminated.

“I think the world of”
Roberts, he explained. “She has the political acumen [to serve in office] and
is a good citizen, and I have tried to support her in every way that I could.”

Political Reform Act

The complaint alleges
that, during the first six months of this year, Hamburg and his campaign
violated 13 sections of the Political Reform Act by failing to return
contributions from donors who failed to identify their occupations or
employers, failing to record non-monetary contributions, failing to specify
interest rates and due dates for identified loans, failing to fully itemize
expenditures, reimbursing the candidate for expenditures of personal funds,
failing to list fundraiser proceeds as contributions, failing to report funds
from drink sales at a campaign event, failing to cumulate contributions from a
single source, and failing to report a late pre-primary contribution within 24
hours of receipt.

Masterson explained that
Roberts had asked him if he had any familiarity with the PRA, and he told her
he did because he had twice chaired campaign committees on behalf of himself
and his fellow justices involved in retention elections. He then looked at
information about Hamburg’s campaign supplied by
Roberts, compared it to the Hamburg campaign filings, and concluded that the complained-of
violations had occurred.

Hamburg told the MetNews that
Masterson’s complaint is “a compilation of picayune matters.” He acknowledged
that his volunteer campaign treasurer “made some mistakes,” but said they were
“all fixable” and opined that he was targeted by “a campaign of harassment” by
“ultraconservatives” who have opposed him in all of his campaigns.

Hamburg, who has ties to
Democratic and Green Party activists, represented a Ukiah-area district on the
board from 1981 to 1985 and was elected to Congress in 1992, ousting Republican
Frank Riggs, who won a rematch two years later. Hamburg ran for governor as the Green Party
candidate in 1998, polling less than 2 percent of the vote, and has since
campaigned for various causes, including legalization of marijuana.

Roberts, who describes
herself on her website as “a Democrat and life-long moderate” with “liberal
values,” has the endorsements of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau and other
business groups.

Masterson was an
attorney at several large firms in Los Angeles from 1958 to 1988, when he was appointed to the
Los Angeles Superior Court by then-Gov. George Deukmejian. He was elevated to
the Court of Appeal by then-Gov. Pete Wilson in 1993 and served seven years before retiring.

Wilson, while serving in the
U.S. Senate, had recommended Masterson for appointment to the federal bench,
but then-President George H.W. Bush did not nominate him.

He noted Friday that he
is a Democrat who grew up in New York City “never met a Republican” until his family moved
to California in the 1940s.